Read and annotate the article here from the New York Times for class on Wednesday.

Does the essay:

• Effectively analyze the article?
  • Analysis includes
    • identifying the article’s overall thesis
    • breaking its arguments into constituent elements
    • showing how those parts function together
    • evaluating the effectiveness of arguments and evidence, taking note of counter arguments, nuance, and areas of uncertainty
    • taking into account what isn’t said in the article (what points have been left out, what are the “holes in the story”?)

• Link the discussion of the article to our broader theme of “formation/appropriation of self?
• Address how the essay uses rhetoric to persuade and in general address the author’s use of language and rhetoric in the article?
• Address the ideas presented in the article in a serious way, taking into account complexity? (I.e., no shallow readings here.)
• Employ a structure that is logical, effective, and striking?
• Use language in an original and powerful way, creating in readers a sense of surprise and delight?
• Adhere to the standards of written English, while additionally demonstrating an impressive understanding of audience and verbal register?
• Speak with authority to readers through the evident intensity of the writer’s engagement with subject matter?

For next Wednesday read the first nine pages of Julia Kristeva’s essay on abjection, Powers of Horror  (to the break at the top of page 9). The essay can be found here. This will be hard going and you should plan on consulting with group members during the week.

Your goal for the week is to create a kind of hypertext of the essay’s opening pages. You should look up words and concept you don’t understand, in essence creating a kind of glossary of the ideas referred to in the essay.

For class Wednedsay come with these notes and include your reflections on your understanding of what Kristeva means by abjection, how does she say it functions both outside the individual (as an external stimulus) and within the individual, and how might her thoughts about abjection apply to our discussions about racial- and gender-based hatreds and prejudices. Additionally mark three places in the text you sense are important which nonetheless are unclear or confusing to you.

By the end of next week, you should have purchased the novel we’ll be reading next. It’s call Preparations for the Next Life. The author is Atticus Lish.

Due dates:

Rough draft: Wednesday, Oct. 21

Final draft: Monday, Nov. 2

For this essay, you may choose one of two options.

For option 1, you may select a single non-fiction essay and write your own essay in response that presents a close reading of the text. Your essay will both deeply analyze the argument the writer develops, critiquing its logic and the evidence it provides, while also looking closely at how the writer uses language, both effectively and ineffectively. This essay should not only reveal the logical and rhetorical mechanics of the essay in a deep and thorough way but should also evaluate the essay’s effectiveness, both as an argument and as an instance of language use. It should reveal the nuance of the writer’s argument, contradictions or unresolved issues in the text, and areas of uncertainty or complexity that admit no ready either/or solution.

The second option is much like the first, except that you may select two essays and write an essay that compares the two works. In this case, your essay first and foremost must clearly show how the two texts interact with one another both in terms of arguments and thesis but also in their employment of rhetoric and their styles. This will require a thorough understanding of the “moving parts” of both essays: arguments, evidence, rhetoric, language. Again, this essay should take account of complexity, nuance, uncertainty, the unresolved, and the irresolvable.

Note: The preference here is that you find an essay or essays on a topic closely related to the themes we’ve been addressing in our readings so far (the social forces that shape the formation of the Self, with special attention to attitudes and social phenomena relating to race, gender, and work).

If you feel strongly about using one of the texts we’ve read so far, speak with me about it and we’ll see if that makes sense. A good source of essays can be found at the Baruch library using your access to JSTOR and other indexes of academic papers. Work in serious and well-regarded general interest magazines such as The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the London Review of Books, and Harper’s, are also acceptable.

To reiterate, please remember that in our discussions and readings we are barely scratching the surface of questions regarding racial and gender prejudice and the shaping force of various social forces that marginalize or dehumanize groups within societies. You are invited to range far afield to find a subject fascinating to you—preferably one you don’t know so much about now: ideally the article or articles you write about should be revelatory.

The two readings for Wednesday can be found at the following links:

“Rape Joke” by Patricia Lockwood can be found here at the online site called The Awl.

“Romani” by T.M. DeVos can be found here at the online literary journal Drunken Boat.

I should have thought of this in class but it didn’t occur to me in time. I suggest that after you’ve completed your essay you put a star next to or underline a sentence or sentences in which you’ve taken a risk or tried something you weren’t sure of.

This is not required. But asking you to consider this question might help you think consciously about experimenting and pushing the boundaries in your writing—something I very much wish to encourage you to do!

See you on Monday.

In line editing the editor (or writer line editing her own work) attempts to make the prose powerful and surprising. Here are a few things line editors might focus on, but remember, the real goal is to bring dazzle and spark to the writing.

• Address any remaining content issues
• Tightening:
  • Needless words, sentences
  • Redundancies (a grammar site here has some good examples)
  • Repetitions (same point made over again)
• Confusing phrases, sentences, or sections
• Tone problems
• Awkward or unnatural phrasing; confusing or unclear phrasing
• Unneeded material or digressions
• Use of hackneyed or dull language

Does the essay:

• Present a narrative that thematically addresses issues related, broadly speaking, to the formation of and “appropriation” or “exploitation” of self;
• Use narrative in a striking way to address deeper ideas, and does it interrogate these ideas with passion and precision;
• Employ a structure that is logical, effective, and striking;
• Use language in an original and powerful way, creating in readers a sense of surprise and delight;
• Adhere to the standards of written English, while additionally demonstrating an impressive understanding of audience and verbal register;
• Speak with authority to readers through the evident intensity of the writer’s engagement with subject matter?

For Monday, please read Chapter 4 of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. Here is the link. Chapter 4 is found on page 61.

Please read with great care. That means when you aren’t fully understanding something, read it over. In the chapter, Fanon presents a complex argument in response to another writer, Maud Mannoni, whom he refers to as M. Mannoni.

When you come to class be prepared to identify the thesis of Mannoni’s argument, as Fanon interprets it, the thesis of Fanon’s response, and the key elements of Fanon’s argument. (In other words, what premises and evidence does he present to prove his case?) Finally, also think carefully about what Fanon says about the nature of racism. How does his take on the nature of racism differ from other views of how racism operates at both the psychological and social levels?

In order to understand some points offered in the chapter, you may need to do go online to find some background about the colonial regimes Fanon discusses.

See you Monday.